


Epic

by AliLamba



Category: Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 10:05:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2543603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliLamba/pseuds/AliLamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My dumb take on “epic”, for VMFicRecs October challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epic

**Author's Note:**

> for VMFicrec’s October challenge. I’m still working on my August submission (yikes), but they had a prompt this month that had been spinning in my head for awhile. The epic speech in the movie made me roll my eyes hardcore but also smile because it was nice to have it in there. But anyway, this is my head canon and yes it turns into porn I tried really hard not to make it turn into porn and then it _did_. Basically. Turn into porn. SORRY NOT SORRY.

[ _The morning after._ ]

Logan slams the door behind himself. His fist hits the polished black wood with explosive impact, and he throws his back against the panel. It’s cold against his bare skin. It is so cold it’s painful. He sinks down the glossy veneer and shoves a hand into his short hair, gripping the strands to ignite some amount of torture. His squeezes his eyes shut and he feels the instinct to cry or implode.

Somewhere outside his door Veronica is running away from him, either descending in the elevator or sprinting to her LeBaron and crying her fucking eyes out.

And he made her do it. It’s all his fault.

_“I remember what you said about our relationship being epic…”_

Logan grimaces, flinching in on himself.

_“Oh – God – “_

Her pure look of agony fills his mind’s eye. What had she come there for? What had he said to make her come?

 _“Last night was kind of a blur_ …"

Last night _was_ kind of a blur. He remembers her coming to the party, and how amazing she’d looked in strapless black. He remembers all the impure thoughts he’d had about her, how much he’d stared at her all night from across the room trying to muster the courage to talk to her, or plan what he wanted to say. He remembers trying to decide what to say through bottle after bottle of champagne, and then at some point…that was it. That is all he can remember.

_Shit._

“ _Ugh_ , I’m _starving._ Baby where is my egg white omelet?”

It’s the most pathetic whine Logan has ever heard in his life. He tries to ignore Kendall Casablancas, because she matters so little in that moment.

“And where is my purse? I thought I left it by the couch. It was _hard_ to find blue alligator, okay…”

 _Think, Logan, think_.

“And I _swear_ I took off my earrings by the sink. Ugh this place is a _dump_.”

“ _Get out_.”

For a split second, Logan is surprised he’s even voiced the rage that was inside his head. When he looks up, it is to find a mostly-dressed Kendall standing half a room away.

Much later in his life, when he is the one being kicked out of a scornful lover’s apartment, he will appreciate the fact that Kendall had the mental faculty to have ninety-percent of her clothes on before being formally evicted. There are a lot of things one could say about Kendall Casablancas, but she wasn’t totally ignorant of the human condition.

“Excuse me,” she asks, all statement no question. Despite her apparent readiness to leave (she could be in a towel and shower cap but he’d still kick her out) she’s still going to remind him of her last name and what it means for their power dynamic.

Logan springs to his feet.

“I said _get out!_ ”

“Whoa,” Kendall says. “No need to go all postal on me. I was leaving anyway.”

Logan wrenches the door open and throws air outside the door in one sweep of his hand that uses his biceps. “ _Out!”_

Kendall isn’t planning on being kicked out like the trash accumulated across the floor of Logan’s suite. She composes herself, shoulders back, staring steadily ahead as she picks her purse up off the couch. She says something pithy on her way out the door that Logan’s brain doesn’t process because it is filled with a dull, buzzing rage.

He runs both hands through his hair. What had Veronica said? “ _I remember what you said about our relationship being epic…”_

All of that is gone. Just. Gone.

… _Oh._

_Wait._

_Oh shit._

Logan’s eyes go wide and he sprints for the bedroom. It has been ages since he’s kept an organized backpack, but somewhere there is a collection of his school stuff; his state-issued textbooks and that one spiral notebook he uses for every one of his classes. He almost rips off the cardstock cover in his attempts to pull it from under the dresser.

Logan spills the notebook open, thinking of all the times he’s been harassed into pretending to take notes during a lecture. All that crap about _the future, what are you going to do with yourself, well I’m going to zone out and think about the next level of Call of Duty for the next forty minutes thank you very much but if it helps to have something in front of me to pretend to take notes while you waste some of_ your _energy talking for an hour like you have a mandated word-count_ …

There it is.

In the margin of his English notes. Months ago. They’d been reading through Shakespeare or some crap, they must have, because Logan’s scribbled little idea is stupidly poetic.

_Epic_

_Veronica = epic_

Being a young person in love he’s thought about his future with Veronica, or his future in general; they are the same thing. He still can’t imagine a life without her or what he’s going to do with himself if she won’t be a part of it. Find another girlfriend? Why bother. What’s the point of kid’s games when you’ve had the real thing?

His heart knows what it wants, and what it wants is that short, scrawny, blond girl with the scary dad and the pit-bull and what basically amounted to barbed-wire fences all around her heart. The barbed wire fences which reflected so clearly in her unmistakable blue eyes.

Logan collapses against gravity next to his bed, staring at that stupid word in his stupid notebook.

“ _I remember what you said about our relationship being epic…_ ”

This is what it must have been. He must have said something that he thought he would never be drunk enough to think out loud. Something about how the way he feels about Veronica is the stuff people write songs about, and that his devotion to her is never going to go away. But that relationship is over now, and as of the last five minutes, it is never, ever going to reanimate.

 _Fuck_.

***

[ _Four months later._ ]

Veronica eyes a piece of popcorn in the bowl, does some unconscious physics regarding trajectory and timing, and tosses it into the air in the direction of her face. Her mouth opens uselessly, and the kernel almost hits her in the eye. She flinches.

Logan glances at her from the corner of _his_ eye – “You okay?” “Yeah.” – and then returns his gaze to the television screen.

Veronica purses her lips and follows his unwavering attention, just in time to see some poor teenager’s arm get blown off. Sprays of red corn syrup splash all over the fake jungle set.

“Remind me to cross Vietnam off my list of Top Relaxing Beach Destinations.”

She can hear him smile. “If it gets you into a bikini I am willing to take you anywhere.”

Veronica smiles wide in appreciation, but when she turns to her boyfriend again she finds he is able to multitask his compliment without taking his eyes off the action.

She almost rolls her eyes, but her suffering is a light sigh instead as she puts the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, snuggling deep into her boyfriend’s shoulder. Logan wraps his arm around her and pulls her closer, taking a moment to place an automatic kiss at the top of her head and an unconscious inhale of her shampoo, before the small band of soldiers starts taking unexpected enemy fire and a land mine goes off and takes out the guy with the radio.

“ _Oh shit!_ ” Logan cries out, springing into action and jarring Veronica out of her space of relative comfort. “Sorry babe, sorry,” he says, pulling her back in, his eyes tracking the action as the three or four guys left find some amount of shelter to have a penultimate conversation about life and liberty.

 _“We will be heroes! Our story will be epic!_ ”

Veronica stills against Logan’s chest. Epic?

She bites the inside of her cheek and glances up at Logan. He hasn’t seemed to pick up on the word, but memories come back of him using the word to _her_ once. _I thought our relationship was epic, you know._

“Hey, Logan…” she says carefully, before she can think to stop herself. Logan glances down at her. “Hm?”

Veronica almost bites the inside of her cheek again. Should she?

Unknowable to her now, is that the word will always be a trigger. She’ll never be able to read, hear, or say the word without thinking of Logan, or having some nonspecific guttural reaction that will momentarily distract her from whatever is going on at the time.

In that living room just then, though, there is such distraction in Logan’s face, that she knows he hasn’t picked up on the word, and that it probably holds no more significance for him other than maybe that one argument they had months and months ago. He would have told her if he’d remembered Alterna-Prom, she decides. He would have waxed poetic sometime because he would have received a really thorough kissing if he’d been able to recite that same _epic_ speech from memory. Logan must know that, even for a guy who makes his girlfriend watch war movies on date night.

Veronica resolves not to bring it up unless he does, because at worst she would come out embarrassed, and at best it would end in tears.

***

[ _Nine months after that._ ]

Logan has either finally cracked that whole space-time continuum business, or he is very, astutely drunk.

Staring into the bottom of what _had_ been a bottomless glass of scotch whiskey before the late-night talk shows had ended, Logan attempts to locate the bottle which he had been so obstinately not drinking from directly. He is not an animal, after all, despite all of his obvious faults. At the very least he can hold himself to the standard of not drinking from the bottle like an animal, and no one could say otherwise because he is not an animal.

Fucking hell he is drunk.

Logan picks up his phone for the thirty-sixth time that evening, knowing that she won’t have texted, knowing that he can’t text her. Dick, passed out as he is on the couch next to him, did a thoroughly good job of convincing Logan of all the reasons he can’t text her.

 _“You’re out of my life… Forever_.”

Ohhhh…. _forever_. Such a stupid word. Such a fucking, stupid, stupid as shit word.

Yes he is very drunk.

 _Well_ , he reflects, with a small smirk only for himself, _that was certainly lives ruined_.

 _Ha_. Logan snorts. _That was a dumb thing to say_.

Logan tilts his head, following this strange turn of phrase.

_“I thought our relationship was epic, you know. Spanning years, and continents. Lives ruined, blood shed, epic.”_

Well fuck him.

_“I thought our relationship was epic, you know.”_

Well shit.

_“Spanning years, and continents.”_

Logan gets up on unsteady feet, catching his hand on the armrest so as not to fall face-first into the coffee table. He remembers, and he remembers Veronica’s face the _last_ time she fled so _epically_ from this very hotel room, and how he is so _epically_ good at fucking things up with Veronica Mars. Being really fucking drunk apparently turns him into a poetic, faint-hearted moron, and being really sober turns him into a fucking asshole.

It is time to start drinking from the bottle.

***

[ _Some time later._ ]

Veronica cannot say she’s ever been a fan of Valentine’s Day. Nope, it has just never been in the vernacular of the Mars’ Family’s favorite things, and yet…and yet here she is, 5:30 pm on February 14th, staring at a thoroughly picked-over Hallmark card aisle, trying to find something for her boyfriend.

It’s his fault, really. He’s the one who put a pink-and red card in front of the coffee maker this morning, so when she woke up – _before caffeine, it should be noted_ – she’d been confronted by the fact that he was, apparently, a Valentine’s Day person and that in all their three months of sleepovers he’d never mentioned this fact.

She pulls a card off the rack at random, flipping open to a picture of a frog proudly proclaiming that he _jumps for joy_ whenever in the reader’s presence. Veronica sighs, realizing that she is the vulture, and that she is staring at an aisle of road kill.

It might be prudent to just pick a card at random and scribble in some nice note. But her aforementioned vernacular has always favored succinctness, and while that’s been serving her well in law school, she’s pretty sure her boyfriend would prefer something more affectionate than _This is a Valentine’s Day Card. You’re welcome_.

Some other poor sap enters her aisle, and they share a resigned, sympathetic smile. Veronica breaks eye contact before he starts conversation, and she picks up the first card her fingers find.

She flips it open, and is surprised when it starts playing music. Aware of her audience, she shuts the card immediately, and then manipulates the simple trigger so that she can open it without ushering in the polka band.

_Accordion to me, you’re awesome!_

Ah, lovely, a message of love. She tries to find some appropriateness to the state of her relationship, but she can’t find a way to spin it.

Veronica frowns, knowing that most of these cards are going to be of the pandering, first-thought ilk, and unfortunately that left the brunt of the work to her. She tests the card’s song again, again cutting it off when it starts playing something obnoxious.

_They don’t write songs about the ones that come easy…_

A coldness sweeps through her, which does not come from the revolving door letting in February air. What an inconvenient time to think about Logan Echolls.

Her mind automatically and quite inappropriately replays the reel of Logan’s speech that night, and without meaning to she compares it to her boyfriend’s mild note that morning ( _Have a great day. I’ll be thinking of you. Happy Valentine’s Day._ ) It hadn’t been particularly inspiring, not that this array of lukewarm drivel has anything akin to…what…

Veronica leans back on her heels and sighs.

Well, this is not a train of thought which will serve her well. In much the same manner that she’s sure her procrastinating friend down the aisle will do, she stuffs the card she holds into its envelope and heads to the cashier.

***

[ _Some oceans away…_ ]

“Dude, I need your help.”

Logan snorts, and doesn’t look up from his book. “Hey Evan.”

Evan apparently isn’t in the mood for niceties and doesn’t return the greeting. “Dude, no, look, I fucked up.”

This earns a glance. Evan does look a little pale, and so Logan uses his thumb as a bookmark and tries to redirect some of his attention. It’s his fourth time trying to get through the first hundred pages of _Lord of the Rings_ , anyway, and it’s not going a whole lot better this time around.

“Look – do you know what day it is?”

Logan spends a second thinking about it. Time on the USS Harry S. Truman is usually measured in days, for instance, day 61 out of 122. _Oh_. The panicked look of his friend now has context. “Could it be…President’s Day?”

Evan looks like he’s not in a joking mood. “Dude, no, you know it’s not.”

Logan makes a show of pretending to think. “MLK? Oh no – shoot - I missed Arbor Day _again?”_ This earns a small crack of a grin, but it is again replaced by anxiety.

“No, man, no! It’s fucking Valentine’s Day, and Amber is fucking pissed.”

Logan sighs and puts down his book. One of the best reasons to avoid on-board hook-ups are arbitrary holidays like this one, when really the whole point of the hook-up is to experience a warm body during this prison sentence that is deployed military service. It’s one of the reasons he’d let Amber down gently day two, not that he’s thinking of bringing this up to Evan right now.

“Pissed why? It’s not like there’s a drugstore to pick up a card and a box of chocolates here.”

Evan hangs his head. “Don’t I fucking know it. But dude, she wants, like – _effort_. Poetry. Shit I don’t know!”

Logan doesn’t know either. Another dumb idea comes to mind and makes him grin.

“Candlelight dinner in the mess?”

It was meant to be a joke, but Evan appears to be actually thinking about it. “That’s not a bad idea…”

“No, it’s a terrible idea.” Evan looks like he’s hoping Logan is joking now. “Terrible. Evan. Don’t do that.” Again the other man deflates like a week-old balloon.

“Well then I got nothing man.”

Logan swings his legs off his bunk, and leans his weight onto his thighs. “Look, all she really wants is to know that you care about her. That you think she’s special.”

“I do care about her. I do think she’s special.”

Logan refrains from saying something stupid, because he doesn’t think there’s anything special about Amber’s rub-on tan or cakey eyeliner. Maybe there is a drug store on board he doesn’t know about.

“So all you have to do is say that.”

“What, just, ‘I care about you, I think you’re special’?”

“Well, no – “ Logan fumbles a little. “Not quite like that, but, you know, something nice. Give examples, or something.”

“I have to write this down.”

Logan thinks Evan’s joking until he actually pulls a pad of paper and a pen from Logan’s tiny desk.

“Okay, Dear Amber…”

Logan rolls his eyes. Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday is starting to sound a bit more appealing now. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day – “

“That’s good, keep going.”

Logan snorts. “You serious?”

He gets a blank look in return.

“Plagiarism? No?” It looks like Evan didn’t pay attention to much Shakespeare in basic training. Logan searches his mind for something else to say, and then just wonders if he should keep spouting this sonnet, though after the stuff about being lovely and temperate he doesn’t remember much. He’s not sure Evan is much of a poet though, and Amber’s expectations are probably pretty low considering, well, the source.

Evan is already plotting ahead. “Dude this needs to be _epic._ I’m pretty sure she’d let me do butt stuff and that needs to _happen, bro_.”

“What’d you say?”

Evan’s eyebrows are emphatic. “Butt stuff? Yeah dude, not kidding. I think she wants it. She was telling me the other night – “

The rest of Evan’s story blurs into a noisy fog, as Logan’s mind clings to the word _epic_ and loops it into a refrain. _Epic…epic…I remember what you said about our relationship being epic…_

Logan’s head snaps up and he tries to follow along with the rest of Evan’s story, but his mind is preoccupied by the one really solid declaration of love he’d ever given and it’s dredging up all those feelings he felt when he said it. He wonders briefly what Veronica Mars is doing at that moment, if she has some Evan trying to write her a love note or…trying to get into her back door. And that’s a bit of a Pandora’s box, so he does the really grown-up thing of tamping down that mental image quickly and just shoving all those memories aside for the moment.

“Puns,” Logan says, interrupting his friend’s story. “You can never really go wrong with puns.”

***

[ _Nine years of radio silence later._ ]

The Mars' kitchen is playing double duty that evening. After a long day of work, visiting her dad, running errands and sex, Veronica and Logan are making dinner. Open beer bottles sit amid cutting boards and food scraps yet to make their way to compost, and their intermittent conversation is shared against the backdrop of some edited-for-time-and-content movie droning from Keith's kitchen counter box set.

Veronica takes a long sip from her beer and tries to follow the final scene in the movie.

 _"I love you,"_ the male lead declares. _"Forever and ever, for oceans deep and forever skies and for every piece of sand on every beach in the world and--"_ The couple seals their newfound love with a kiss, and Veronica rolls her eyes.

"S'not epic," she mutters, looking for something to do. She puts down her bottle as the music swells, the camera zooms in, and the lovebirds kiss for an implied eternity. “D’you want me to start making the coleslaw, or – “

"What'd you say?"

Veronica glances back to where Logan had been flipping burgers on the grill pan, and finds him looking at her curiously.

"What?" she says, reflexively.

Logan almost frowns and almost grins. "You said something, under your breath, when Jim and Jane were making out."

Veronica's hands freeze on the kitchen island. 

Veronica has always called this the  _Oh Shit_  moment, where the accused realizes they've said something they shouldn't have, and their brain spins like VHS on rewind. It makes for a stunningly dumb facial expression.

"No I didn't."

It sounds petulant, and Logan recognizes it as such immediately. "No, what'd you say? Did you say... _'epic'_?"

"No," Veronica denies, knowing her eyes are round and wide. "I said...bacon. We should put bacon, on the burgers." She twists immediately and heads toward the fridge, opening both the fridge and freezer looking for cold strips of pork.

"No," Logan argues, his voice sounding like he is more amused than mocking, not that it makes her any less self-conscious. "I'm pretty sure you said  _epic_."

“What about we make our own In-N-Out sauce? Mystery be damned, everyone knows it’s basically like equal parts ketchup, relish, and mayo.”

“Veronica.”

“Although I’m not sure whether I just infringed copyright law. Really skimped on that seminar regarding patents. Probably because those jerks in the government didn’t let me patent _my own brain_ when I was twelve—“

“ _Veronica._ ”

Veronica stops probing the inside of the ice box for elements of distraction, and sighs. She stands up straight, closes the fridge behind herself and leans her back against it. She knows Logan hasn’t been dissuaded by her _non-patented_ techniques, and that he’s waiting for her to finish the conversation she’d inadvertently and unconsciously started.

"So?" she asks, feeling not unlike that old head of lettuce at the back of the fridge she should’ve really thrown out already.

"So why'd you say it?"

Logan had turned the burner off. He obviously meant to actually get an answer out of her, so Veronica searches her mind for something to say. She feels unsure; a rarity in the Mars universe, and something only Logan can pull out of her with any regularity.

"Well it was a terrible speech," she says, evasively. Logan folds his arms over his chest and leans into a hip. 

"Well it was Tom Cruise playing a nuclear physicist slash heart surgeon," he says back.

Veronica pulls her lower lip into her mouth and chews on it to buy some time. She doesn’t really want to talk about this memory with Logan just yet. It has been less than a week since her dad had landed in the hospital, and less than a week since she and Logan had rekindled whatever there was to rekindle between them. Despite spending nearly every waking moment in each other's company, she’s not sure how far to take the depth of their relationship. She’s not sure that between all the laughing, and the making out, and the sleeping in the same bed every night that their relationship is something that will last beyond this fortnight before Logan's next deployment.

What has she been telling herself?  _Keep it light_.

"All I'm saying is that Jane could’ve held out for better."

Logan rolls his eyes. "Well maybe Harvard didn't let Tom Cruise triple major in creative writing."

"Well then that is stingy of the U.S. Government for paying for his education, then."

Logan’s eyes gleam as if he is about to announce  _checkmate_ , like he did when they tried to play strip chess last night _._ "You said  _then_  twice, Mars, I know your tells. Out with it."

Veronica frowns.

She’s starting to feel sort of cornered into it, into telling him, and it isn’t a very comfortable feeling. She's never been a very good loser; as proven when they tried to play strip chess last night.

"It's nothing, okay? Let's just drop it."

She went too far. Logan’s smile softens, and then fades, but he doesn’t say anything right away.

Veronica looks at her toes, having sensed a cooling of the air between them. It reminds her of the petty fights they'd had in college, before they'd broken up, and she wonders whether things would’ve been better if she’d just admitted to the memory in the first place.

"I'm prepared to guess that you thought Dr. Tom McScientist's speech was bad because you'd heard a better one once before."

Veronica’s head snaps up. Logan is looking at her now with these somber _Please listen to what I’m saying_ eyes, and they make her mind go blank.

"I think this one time you heard a guy pour his heart out. I'm thinking maybe he was drunk, and maybe he was just trying to get laid, and maybe he was trying to get back a girl he was still totally in love with."

Veronica's eyebrows raise over widened eyes, and her lungs inhale a slow, deep, preparative breath. "I didn't think you remembered. The morning after--"

"Yeah I didn't remember then," Logan says, not a little regretfully. He moves to within a few feet of Veronica's toes, and he looks like he’s frowning on behalf of a very old memory. "And it only came back in bits and pieces when I realized I'd lost you for a second time, and getting drunk meant thinking about you in grandiose terms guys don't generally like to think in."

"There's no way you remember," Veronica counters. This is something that, even in months of dating after the fact, they'd never mentioned to each other.

"Veronica our story is epic," he recites. Veronica's eyes go impossibly wider than before. She is a deer in headlights, the kid with the radio realizing he’s just stepped on a Vietnamese landmine _,_ the fifth-string accordion player suddenly thrust into the spotlight.

Logan takes a step closer. Veronica’s heart is racing. "Spanning years," he continues, moving into her personal space. Her breath stays in her lungs. For a moment it looks like he is going to kiss her, but when he leans against her body and his hand goes behind the small of her back his lips touch the side of her neck instead. "And continents."

He kisses her neck again, and Veronica feels the heat of it fan through her veins.

“Lives ruined,” Veronica recites instinctually, and she kind of hates how her voice gone all inexplicably breathy.

Logan pulls back sharply, and he looks into her eyes and down at her lips. A small smile twitches on his face. “Blood shed,” he answers. He kisses her nose lightly. “Epic.” His lips touch her own, and he kisses her. He kisses her in a way that is entirely distracting and entirely engrossing, and for a few minutes of kissing she forgets she is in a kitchen with her back against a refrigerator and instead she is thinking of Logan and the fact that he is kissing her at all, and that it feels so good to be kissing him.

“You remember,” she whispers.

“I remember,” he answers.

Another surge of heat, and Logan’s hands fall to Veronica’s waist, and his fingers curl in the fabric of her jeans. There’s a moment of indecision – up or down, up or down – and then the fingers of his right hand crawl up her shirt and over her stomach, until he finds the soft mound of her breast. Veronica leans into him, feeling warm all over, mouths still connected and moving together on instinct. Logan cups his palm to her nipple through the soft padding of her bra, his fingers finding the upper edges of cotton. His middle finger pushes the fabric of her bra down, and the warmth of his palm massages the weight of what he finds underneath. He thumbs her hardening nipple until she pulls her mouth away to breathe.

Logan moves his mouth to the side of her neck again, hand pulling out of her shirt so he can tug the neck of her blouse away. His lips cover the sensitive crux at her shoulder, and Veronica moans as she feels the electric pressure between her thighs spasm and bloom.

Logan yanks her blouse up and over her head, dropping it to the floor. Veronica forgets about it immediately. His hand cradles where his lips had been before, putting her head exactly where he wants so he can kiss her lips and push his hips into hers. Veronica grabs the belt loops of his pants and pulls him closer. She she curves one thigh around his, angling them together through their pants. Her intentions could not be more clear.

“Kitchen?” Logan gasps through a released breath, asking how quickly they can have sex.

Veronica tries to divert oxygen to her larynx. “No,” she says, because there are sharp knives and sliced tomatoes and infomercials for garden tools in that kitchen and she wants no distractions. “Bedroom. Go.”

***

“Okay, so. I liked that. We can do that again.”

She really can’t help how enthusiastically exhausted and happy she sounds. Veronica is partly laughing at herself because of the way her hair is in her mouth, partly post-high, and partly because her typically-controlled breath is coming out in panting monosyllables. Logan laughs just as breathlessly.

“Was it epic?”

Veronica’s eyes squeeze shut as she groans through good humor, grabbing a pillow and pushing it into her face. Logan laughs harder at her reaction and pulls the pillow off her so he can kiss her again.

“ _So epic_ ,” she antagonizes through a smile, pulling the hair out of her mouth, letting him know that he’s being a total dork and she likes it. She looks down her body and finds she never fully got her pants off her left ankle. “I definitely spanned a continent there.”

Logan laughs out loud. “Just one?”

Veronica rolls her eyes at him and tosses the pillow in his general direction. “Well I spanned one already this morning! I have to save up some miles before I can go again!”

Logan kisses her soundly, which is a wonderful thing because he’s smiling so widely.

“I would love to show you the world.”

Veronica rolls her eyes again and pokes him in the smooth pectoral muscle. “Not now. And unless you want to see some bloodshed, a girl has got to eat sometimes.”

Logan is the first to crack and break eye contact. He dips his head and kisses her cheekbone, and then the opposite cheekbone, and then the tip of her nose and her chin. He’s been doing it a lot lately, the nose kissing, and Veronica keeps meaning to bug him into revealing why.

“Oh, Veronica Mars, I love you.”

Veronica tilts her head so she can see Logan’s face, in part to tell whether he is being sincere. It isn’t the first time a person has told her they loved her, and not even the first time Logan Echolls has said as much. It is still mostly surreal to hear it now. She knows her eyes light up, but the part of her brain connected to her her lips has never quite had a vast connections to declarations of love.

“You love me?” she asks. In the back of her mind she is thinking things like _it’s only been a few days_ and _it’s too soon_ and _I know what you mean._

"How could anyone in the world not love you," he answers, so rhetorically, in the way small children come to terms with the fact that everyone dies eventually.

Veronica feels her heart swell with feeling. It swells so much she knows she won’t be able to say anything back, so she kisses Logan lightly on his lips, and closes her eyes because she feels the puzzling sting of tears. Maybe it’s just been an eventful few weeks. Maybe she’s tired, or all the talk of epic is actually getting to her. It doesn’t matter. For a small moment, none of it matters, and she hugs Logan close to her and resolves not to be the first to let go.

_I love you too._

***

**Author's Note:**

> So that’s my dumb take. At the very least I think it makes how quickly they start repeating that speech more believable (to me, anyway). Reviews make me smile and stay up late. Happy Halloween!


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